Taking stock of our moment in history helps us better understand ourselves, our societies and the present moment itself — which often gets lost in the temptation to look backwards or forwards. And at TED2014: The Next Chapter we’re doing plenty of both. But we’re also designating this All-Stars session to the here and now, which happens to be pretty incredible. These are speakers who stand on the front lines of education, justice, the environment and more, sharing their portions of the work that defines our times.

Below, read a detailed recap of each talk given in this session:

The session kicks off with Salman Khan, whose Khan Academy has rocked the world since it launched in 2006 (he talked about its amazing rise at TED2011). His online learning tool — which now has has 150 million users who have completed 1,912,559,000+ math problems in 200,000 classrooms across the globe — flips the classroom to give students the resources and tools to teach themselves at their own pace. For his next trick, Khan Academy is partnering with the College Board to develop test prep for the revamped SAT that will launch in 2016. But Khan’s set his sights even higher: what if we can teach 100% of the population to understand complex concepts like genetics, computer science and robotics? Let’s turn access to this knowledge into a fundamental human right.

As the creator of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim-Berners Lee has a lot to say about the future of the Internet. He believes that many good things have happened. To start, usage of the Web has grown from 5% of the world population in 2000 to 40% today. On that Web, people can find education, commerce, government, health information, and ways to connect with those they care about. But there are other things as well, from the recent revelations of surveillance, to the eroding neutrality, to corporate centralizations, and the emergence of filter bubbles. He believes that we need to think very hard about what sort of Internet we want, and then fight to make sure we get it. He wants to use the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the web to crowd-source a Magna Carta for the web. “Do me a favor,” he said, “fight for it for me.”

Amy Cuddy. Photo: Bret Hartman

Since giving her blockbuster talk on body language at TEDGlobal 2012, social psychologist Amy Cuddy has heard from people around the world that her talk has helped them realize their full potential. She shares the stories from across the globe — of a girl in Bangladesh who learned to overcome the cultural norms of femininity and take more space; of a clinical psychologist in Johannesburg, South Africa who uses power posing in her therapy; of high school teacher in the U.S. who coached his volleyball team to power pose to win their match; of a homeless man in California who has harnessed his self-worth through his body language. Her latest research has revealed that imagining yourself in the power pose for two minutes is as effective as actually doing it. She leaves the stage with a reminder from Maya Angelou: “Stand up straight!”

Last year at TED2013, Allan Savory gave a striking and controversial talk on his idea for holistic landscape management as a way of reversing climate change. He returned to have a short conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, who asked what has happened since. Savory replied that the idea is taking off, so much that they’ve lost count of the acreage managed under his system. When asked about the criticisms, Savory replied that it’s “100% based on solid science, it has been working for 50 years, and all of that is from successful people spreading the word.” He went on to say that there have been specific criticisms — about the amount of methane produced, whether the land affected can actually absorb enough carbon, and whether people actually eat that much meat — but that, “Even if you assume these issues are wrong, we still have no option, we have to address climate change, we have to address desertification, and only livestock, properly managed, can do that.”

It’s high time we find a smarter way to fix global warming, says economist Bjorn Lomborg. We need to shift our focus away from subsidies towards innovation. Let’s take the lessons we’ve learned from other industries: the whaling industry innovated by creating kerosene, not controlling the consumption of whales. The transportation industry innovated by creating cars, not subsidizing horses. When India was struck with famine, the government did not subsidize food, but rather supported the Green Revolution to support long-term food production for India’s hungry. So, Lomborg says, let’s stop with the green subsidies and instead support green innovation.

Amanda Palmer gives the audience a choice between two songs: a new one that’s depressing, or a shorter one that’s light-hearted. It’s a tie, broken by Neil Gaiman, who (a bit surprisingly) suggested the light one. Palmer introduces the song by explaining, “There was an argument on the internet about whether Lady Gaga is a real artist, and it remains relevant, especially in the face of Miley Cyrus.” Watch “Gaga, Palmer, Madonna.” After, she talked about the effect her talk has had. “I’m now known more for giving my TED Talk than for being a musician, which is kind of weird.” She is also now writing a book about the talk, so look forward to that.

Are we entering a world where it’s harder to be an autocracy, but it’s also harder to be a democracy? Social media theorist Clay Shirky looks at two recent political movements that offer both hope and worry. From the 2013 protests in Istanbul, we can see the empowerment of citizens through social media: “There is no authoritarian government in the world that regards the spread of social media as anything other than a mortal threat,” he says. But from the 2010 Red Shirt Uprising in Bangkok, we see an example of the insurgency inherent in democracy, and the dangers of symmetric anti-power. The Red Shirts successfully staged an uprising in 2010, only to face counter-protests by the Yellow Shirted opposition the following year. Democracy and social media empower citizens to push back against business as usual, but does it also present a “nightmare scenario” where two groups can bring each other to a halt, with no government in charge? I’m not sure, jokes Shirky: With a five-minute talk, you can raise questions, but you can’t provide answers.

David Brooks, pundit for the New York Times, has been thinking about the difference between résumé virtues and eulogy virtues. Which do we think are more important, and which do we spend the most time thinking about? He is reminded of a notion from Soloveitchik about two parts of our nature, Adam 1 and Adam 2. Adam 1 is the worldly, ambitious side of our nature. Adam 2 is the humble side of our nature. The two are at war with each other. Brooks says: “We live in a society that favors Adam 1, and that turns you into a shrewd animal … and you’re not earning the kind of eulogy you want.” He goes on to say that Adam 1 is built by building on your strengths, while Adam 2 is built by fighting your weaknesses. “You find a sin, you wrestle with that sin, and a depth of character is constructed,” says Brooks — a skill that isn’t taught in our society. He closes with a wonderful quote from Reinhold Neibuhr.

“Barry Schwartz’s talk really changed the way I thought about decisions and choice,” says Chris Anderson as he brings this next speaker to the stage. Schwartz lays out the concept of idea technology — ideas that fundamentally shape who we are, and the world we live in. False ideas are a dangerous thing, warns Schwartz: “false ideas about human beings will not go away if people believe they are true — people create ways of living consistent with these ideas.” For an example, Schwartz examines the current capitalistic model of work that evolved from Adam Smith’s vision of the factory system. It’s a model of work where you get nothing out of your day’s work except the pay. But this is just a false idea creating circumstance, says Schwartz, and the power to design our reality lies plainly in our hands. “What kind of human nature do you want to help design?”

(L-R) Chris Anderson and Bryan Stevenson. Photo: Bret Hartman

Two years ago, Bryan Stevensongave a stunning talk on one of the deepest problems in American culture — the mass incarceration of African Americans. He returns for a conversation with Chris Anderson to update the TED audience. Since then, the Supreme Court has declared that the death penalty for minors is unconstitutional. His group, EJI, has extended that work, and is now trying to end the practice of putting children into adult prisons, and having children as young as 9 or 10 or 11 tried as adults. He also says that while the fight is mostly at the state level, a conversation needs to be had at the national level. On the state level: California eliminated Three Strikes laws, the prison population saw a slight decrease for the first time in many years, and people are starting to have conversations about being smart about crime. He has also started a wider conversation about race in the United States, as a way of addressing the “legacy of racial injustice that we’ve never really dealt with, the myths that came about with slavery.”

Offering heartfelt lessons learned from a friend lost, Lawrence Lessig closes the session with his impassioned vision for a U.S. government free from the strangling tentacles of corruption. 96% of Americans believe it’s important to reduce the role of money in politics, but 91% feel that there’s nothing they can do to reform campaign finance. That’s why Lessig walked 185 miles across New Hampshire this past January — to give hope to citizens who want to see change. He was joined by 200 people, and his plan for next year is to be joined 1,000 people. In January 2016, just before the U.S. presidential primary, he envisions 10,000 people descending on Concord, New Hampshire. To equalize campaign finance, he’s launching MayOne, the SuperPAC to end all SuperPACs. He evokes the spirit of the late open-data activist Aaron Swartz. “May the ideals of one boy unite one nation behind one critical idea that we are one people, the people who were promised to be dependent upon the people alone,” says Lessig. “The people, who as Madison told us, are not the rich more than the poor … Join this movement because you are a citizen.”

On the TED2013 stage, Savory offered a fascinating idea for reclaiming degraded land — using livestock to mimic the behavior of herds that used to roam these lands. The idea is bold and counterintuitive, and sparked lively debate the minute Savory stepped off the stage. Savory returns today with the TED Book The Grazing Revolution, which digs much deeper into this idea.

The process of desertification is complex, and Savory’s holistic solution requires many moving parts. So we’ve provided these handy visual Cliffs notes of key terms Savory uses in the book, to help everyone get the footing to understand this fascinating read.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/an-infographic-cheat-sheet-for-key-concepts-in-the-grazing-revolution/feed/3Savory-graphic-featurekatetedDesertification. A look at the process that's turning more and more land to desert.Healthy landscape. A look at what it takes for land to support plant life and, in turn, wildlife.Ancient Land Cycle. How wild herds kept land healthy for millions of years.Overgrazing. Why its critical that livestock not graze on the same land for too long a period of time.Overresting. And why its critical that animals not stay away from land for too long.Burning. A widely-accepted land management strategy, this graphic hints why it may not be so good after all.Mimicry of nature. A look at what Savory's holistic management strategy aims to accomplish.Detailed planning. Why land managers must take into account weather and other conditions as they move large herds of livestock.Return. The end result: land can be revived, with big impact for human beings.Let’s unite as Team Humanity to revive degraded land: A conversation with TED Books author Allan Savory and rancher Gail Steigerhttp://blog.ted.com/how-we-can-unite-as-team-humanity-to-revive-degraded-land/
http://blog.ted.com/how-we-can-unite-as-team-humanity-to-revive-degraded-land/#commentsThu, 12 Dec 2013 19:15:39 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=84723[…]]]>

Allan Savory is a biologist who has spent a lifetime trying to save degraded land. Gail Steiger is a rancher and filmmaker who has long followed his work. Below, what happens when the two talk. Make sure to read to the end for the stab-you-in-the-heart final question.

All over the world, land is turning into desert at an alarming rate. Biologist Allan Savory has dedicated a lifetime to figuring out what’s causing this “desertification.” Finally, after decades of work in the field, Savory discovered a radical solution—one that went against everything scientists had always thought. He used huge herds of livestock, managed to mimic the behavior of the natural herds that roamed grasslands centuries ago, and saw degraded land revert to robust ecosystems.

Here, Savory talks with rancher, performer and acclaimed filmmaker Gail Steiger about his new TED Book The Grazing Revolution: A Radical Plan to Save the Earth, detailing his remarkable and often difficult journey to discovery—one that ultimately ends with great hope for the future.

Gail Steiger: First of all, I’d just like to thank you for all that you’ve done for—actually, for the world. I’ve been familiar with your work since your book in ’88. Lots of my friends here in Arizona attended your school, and you’ve just made a great contribution to all of us. Can I ask you for some historical information? Tell me a little bit about the most valuable experiences that informed your thinking today.

Allan Savory: Oh, gosh. That goes back a long way. Let me just start before I left university and joined the Game Department, in what was then Colonial Service, in Northern Rhodesia. (It’s now Zambia.) I was very passionate about wildlife, elephants in particular, but also rhino and so on— the big game of Africa. And I had this new, shiny degree, and training as a botanist, zoologist and ecologist. But when I went into the field, I hit reality. What I’d been taught just simply wasn’t making sense. It didn’t match with what I was seeing. To give you an example: We were taught that overgrazing caused desertification. More specifically, that desertification was due to too many livestock, and that the answer was reducing the numbers of animals and burning the grass to keep it healthy.

Well, I was soon engaged in burning massive areas of land to keep the grass healthy. This was land that was to become our future national parks. I couldn’t help but observe the fact that we were baring the soil, and that the bare soil was subsequently being carried away by the rainfall. And as I mention in my TED Book, I actually took to walking in the rain so that I could see what was happening for myself. And just found it was wrong, you know? Of course, I didn’t have answers, but I began very seriously looking for them.

Then came one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Because the land degradation was so bad, but there wasn’t any livestock on it, I proved the problem must be that there were too many elephants. And the government, after investigating my book and approving, shot 40,000 elephants. But the desertification only got worse, and it’s still getting worse to this day. As I look back, one my biggest findings came from trying something, making a mistake and saying, “Well, why did it go wrong?” So actually some of the biggest findings came from the failures.

Another big finding for me was when I happened to pick up a farming magazine off a coffee table in a farmer’s house and read an article by John Acocks. John was a botanist studying the extension of the Karoo Desert bushes taking over what had been grassland. He had concluded that the land was understocked—was carrying too few animals—but was overgrazed. So he said South Africa was deteriorating because of overgrazing and understocking. This caused a furor in the scientific community. Acocks was ridiculed, but to me it was brave new thinking. I actually drove all the way down to the Cape to go and see him personally and was able to visit some of the ranchers he was working with.

Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change
Now, I’m always looking for places where something different is happening. Some people call that “positive deviance.” I spotted one such deviance while I was visiting a ranch: A patch of land that was visibly much better than the rest. I got very excited and asked the rancher what had happened in that spot. He told me the sheep he was using had crowded there for a short time. That was a big moment for me, the moment when I suddenly realized connection between what I was seeing there, and what I had first observed with large wildlife herds. That’s when I realized we could possibly use livestock to mimic the wild animals. It was a big turning point.

But the most difficult piece of the puzzle, the one I still believe we never could have discovered in Africa, was that the greatest single cause resulting in desertificaion is overresting the land. And I really believe we could only have discovered that in America. Because when I got here, I found such vast areas of land with nothing on them. I mean, it was almost like being at sea. There was not a sound — not a bird chirp, nothing. In Africa, India, South America, anywhere else I’d been, it was hard to find silence. There were birds, monkeys, something all around you. But when I struck national parks in America with not a sound, and still saw terrible desertification taking place, that was a big horror moment.

GS: In Holistic Management, you talked a bit about your experiences trailing both humans and wildlife, and how that enabled you to see what was actually happening. I appreciate that. The ranch I’m on is pretty rough country, and sometimes we just can’t find our cattle. If you can’t trail, you’re not going to do much good out here.

AS: I spent a lot of my life—20 years of it—in war, training army trackers and commanding a tracker unit, and then in the Game Department, tracking lions, and elephants and poachers. So I’ve spent literally thousands of hours tracking people or animals, and training others to do it. And yes, that was an incredible opportunity; rarely do scientists have the opportunity to be trying to solve a problem on the land, and then spend so many thousands of hours tracking. I mean, we couldn’t dictate where guerrilla gangs would penetrate the country, but wherever they came, we had to go and track them down. And so we tracked in every imaginable sort of county.

Then you have the long nights where you sit and think about it: Why the hell was it easy today? Why was it so difficult yesterday? What sort of land are we on? What sort of climate are we in here? Am I in a national park or on communal land or on a commercial ranch? You’re thinking about it all every night, and the next day you’re tracking again all damn day.

Only many years later did I read the book by Liebenberg, where he explains pretty logically that tracking was probably the origin of science. I think his argument was very good, because a good tracker is not just following tracks. A good tracker is interpreting all the time, from every little sign, you know? Not just interpreting the age of the tracks but also: Is it wounded? Is it hungry? A good tracker is interpreting a lot.

Allan Savory gave a talk with a solution for land degradation that set TED2013 abuzz. Today, he releases the TED Book, The Grazing Revolution.

GS: It certainly led to good work! Can you tell me a little bit about your TED Book? Your earlier works have been specifically targeted to land managers. But of course TED casts a much broader net, and I’m wondering what do you think urban dwellers can bring to the land-management table? What’s your intention there?

AS: Urban dwellers are the only ones that can save the situation. Let me explain that: The bulk of the populations of almost every country have moved to the cities, or are moving there. That’s where the voting power is — the mass of public opinion is. Now the stuff I talked about at TED, we’ve talked about for years. Now you might ask: Well, why did nothing change? At first, I too could not understand. It did not seem logical. But as I grappled with it, I went back to researching other fields to see if there was any reason for this, and I found there was.

Hard systems are everything we’re using right now — computers, phones, planes, the clothes you’re wearing, the room you’re in. Everything there involves 100% use of technology and expertise to make it, and nothing we make — including space exploration vehicles and so on — is complex. Everything we make is complicated. Nothing is self-renewing. If the computer is missing a part, it doesn’t work, or the plane is missing a part, it doesn’t work. It can’t self-organize.

But if we look at human organizations, they are complex. In other words, they do what they’re designed to do, and can be very efficient, be they a university, a hospital, etc. But they—because they’re complex, self-organizing, composed of hundreds of individual humans all interacting—they have what are called emergent properties, things that emerge that weren’t planned or intended. And these can result in what system science calls “wicked problems.” This doesn’t mean they’re amoral — just that they’re extremely difficult to solve.

There are two wicked problems of human organizations. One is that they cannot—they simply cannot—accept new scientific insights ahead of society in general. And so that is why my TED Talk in 20 minutes did more than 50 years of struggle within the scientific community. Because it was seen by—as far as I can make out— over a million people. And so the information is now getting to society. And already organizations that have been aloof or blocked us or resisted are beginning to collaborate with us and change.

So it’s only the people in the cities that can begin to change public opinion or societal view. When there’s a sufficient groundswell, then our institutions can change. We’re not going to be able to stop the desertification of the United States when so much of the land is federal-owned land under government agencies that are trying to save the wildflowers or the horses or stop the terrible droughts and floods that are occurring in America. We’re not going to be able to stop those until the public opinion is deeper, until people understand that there is no option but livestock over most of that land, and that these policies need to be developed holistically.

GS: It would seem like a holistic approach would require us to rethink the entire scientific method. I mean, if you look at education in this day and age, there’s ever more pressure to specialize. The higher level you attain, the more it requires you to focus on ever-narrower subjects, and it seems like we would really have to rework everything.

AS: That’s very much part of the problem. John Ralston Saul points out — after studying what’s happened since Voltaire’s time, the Age of Enlightenment, where we were no longer going to have massive blunders because organizations would be headed by professional-trained people and you could no longer buy or inherit your position — that following that period in history, the blunders increased. He notes that no matter how brilliant the people, no matter how well-meaning and caring, if they’re in an institution or organization, because of complexity, what emerges very often lacks common sense and humanity.

So you can—as I’ve done—talk to city audiences almost anywhere and say: Does it make sense for the United States to produce oil to grow corn to produce fuel? And people just laugh and say: No, that’s stupid and it’s inhumane. Well, thousands of scientists employed and paid salaries by organizations signed off on that. I was in Australia recently and I found it’s a greater crime with heavier penalties for a farmer to sell you fresh, clean raw milk than it is to sell drugs. See, it doesn’t make sense.

Saul attributed that to the education system. And quoting Saul here, he said, “The reality is that the division of knowledge into feudal fiefdoms of expertise has made general understanding and coordinated action not simply impossible but despised and distrusted.”

GS: I remember back in the ‘80s, as ranchers we were under a lot of pressure from environmental groups—they really wanted to remove all livestock from public lands.

AS: Yeah, “cattle-free by ’93.”

GS: Exactly. The idea that industrial agriculture could somehow save us: Could you comment on that at all?

AS: Those environmentalists, they’re trained in the same universities. I understand them, because I also once believed that if we could get rid of the livestock and return to just wildlife, we might be able to stop the degradation of the land. But again, I was wrong, because that became a major multi-billion dollar industry, mainly in places like Texas and South Africa. But every single game ranch without exception that I’ve been on, the land is still deteriorating. I held those same beliefs — that we just had to get rid of livestock — so I understand those environmentalists. In my case, I just saw that I was wrong. And I loved the land and wildlife more than I hated livestock. So I changed.

GS: I have a personal question to ask. Most of us who are involved in agriculture, who are not landowners, have kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that the rewards come in other than financial ways. It seems to me like the best thing about being able to manage livestock on a big piece of land is that every day you get a chance to appreciate just what a gift it is to get to come and live on this planet, you know? And it seems like we operate under this economic system that measures everything in terms of dollars and cents. I mean, most economic theory would say we could measure all goods in those terms, and that doesn’t appear to be a defensible assumption. And the other assumption is that all growth is good, the more the better. It seems like a holistic approach would require that we rethink those things, particularly the one that equates happiness with dollars and cents.

AS: You’re absolutely right. But again, we will not solve this by just taking a holistic approach, although that is necessary. We’ll only solve it by actually developing policies holistically. The things you mentioned just cannot go on. I mean, constant growth in a finite world is just simply not scientific. The use of fiat money — where money makes money—and wealth is accumulating ever more in the 1% — that’s inevitable with the monetary system we have. And then the development, or the measurement of growth on gross domestic product, is just ridiculous. For example, how can it possibly be holistically sound, or scientifically sound, or even common sense to measure your economic growth where you value building jails at the same level as you value building hospitals or schools? What we’re doing lacks humanity.

GS: In a broader sense, what assumptions does our culture make that are most damaging to our planet? It seems that more materialistic we get, and the more we do urbanize, the greater the threats are.

AS: I’ve thought about this for many, many years. For me, it was best summed up at a conference my wife and I attended long ago in Sweden in an address by Gro Harlem Brundtland. She was appealing to the scientists there to see the problems as interconnected. She pointed out that international agencies that she was dealing with at the time were spending many, many millions of dollars on many things: Droughts, floods, locust invasions, poverty, violence, weeds, etc. And everywhere, it’s failing. We’re not succeeding. If we could see the interconnections between these—what’s in common—maybe we could be more successful.

I did a lot of thinking after that, and have continued to over the years. We’re blaming many things. We’re blaming politicians; we’re blaming greed, capitalism. But it’s not that. Because I looked at all the things we were blaming for the situation in Africa: Overstocking, communal land tenure, people not loving the land, the tragedy of the commons, overpopulation, inadequate access to capital. And then I looked at the situation in West Texas and I found the opposite of every one of these things: Private land, people loved it, they weren’t abusing it. No overstocking with livestock, they’d been de-stocking for over a century, consistently. No overpopulation, very low and falling population. Great access to capital wealth. Good universities. But the same problem.

Clearly, there was something else causing all this, and I think it’s this: When you look at agriculture overall, it’s the biggest single problem facing humanity, even bigger than the oil one. Agriculture in its broader sense, you know, the production of food and fiber from the world’s land and waters. Because even after we discover benign sources of energy, climate change and poverty and drought—all these problems will continue because they’re manmade. And they’re causing the climate change.

When I look at this and see that so many millions of people who are much, much brighter than I am — far more highly trained than I am — doing their best, and it’s still going so wrong, then you have to, I believe, realize it’s a systemic problem.

Now, when we’re managing holistically — doing holistic land grazing, trying to help the government develop a policy — we begin by looking at exactly what is it that we’re managing, get that clear first, and then define the holistic context though tying people’s deepest cultural, societal values and needs to a life-supporting environment. Once we have a holistic context, and we can then look at the objectives and the actions to be taken, and see if they are in context. And that’s the way that we are able now to insure that they’re much more likely to achieve our objectives, because we’re not dealing with symptoms only, but dealing with the systematic problem and making sure our solutions don’t lead to unintended consequences.

And just as soon as governments and city folks start insisting that all policies and projects be developed holistically, you’ll see that the same people, the exact same people that are producing dismal results today will astound us. They’ve got so much knowledge. It’s just a systemic problem. And most people are good. Most people are trying to do the right thing. And just like when the Wright brothers discovered how to fly, on a certain day, we had no barriers in the way after that. A whole new society believed in technology. No government, no organization put any barriers in the way. We released human creativity, and within 70 years we were on the moon.

If you look at centuries of civilizations using agricultural practices that have culminated in climate change, it’s the same story. Now that we’ve discovered how to actually develop policies and projects holistically, if we can get the barriers out of the way, and release the creativity that’s in our universities, our farming organizations, amongst our farmers and land managers, we’ll be astounded. As I’d like to express it, the human spirit will fly.

GS: So are you optimistic about the future now? Where’s the trend going since you began?

AS: The mainstream trend is going the wrong way. I mean, you know that. But I’m more optimistic now than I ever could have been at any period in history because if we’d been having this discussion, say in the Roman times when North Africa was turning to desert, we couldn’t have done anything about it. We didn’t know what was causing it. Now we do. And even if we’d known the causes, we still were lacking the ability to communicate and network around the world. It’s the social networking that is now allowing me, for instance, to spread this to millions of people.

Now there’s one other thing that’s lacking that we haven’t quite got yet. The last thing we need is something to unite all humans. If we look throughout history, we unite in times of war against a human enemy. And we’ll unite for a long time, but the moment the war is over, we’re back to squabbling. So we need something to unite us as team humanity— something that is not a war. The only thing I could see doing that would be the overall acceptance of the seriousness of climate change. Climate change is desperately serious, but we’ve still got people deliberately causing confusion, spending millions to do that. We’ve doubters. But the moment that humans accept the seriousness of climate change, then we can unite as team humanity, whether you’re American or Chinese or African or from any other part of the world. We’re humans, and we’re not going to survive if we don’t deal with this. All the talk about adapting to climate change is like telling the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water to adapt. We have to actually address it.

GS: Well, thank you for doing more than your part to bring this to the attention to many folks. Is there something that we haven’t touched on that you would like to address?

AS: Well, I think I’ve rambled across the whole field, because this is what I live with in my mind year in and year out. I’m so worried about the future. I mean, at my age, I’m in the departure lounge. But young people are going to have to face this, and I’m desperate to give them a chance.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/how-we-can-unite-as-team-humanity-to-revive-degraded-land/feed/4AlanGail_Q&AquintmichelleAlanGail_Q&AAllan Savory gave a talk with a solution for land degradation that set TED2013 abuzz. Today, he releases the TED Book, The Grazing Revolution. 8 talks about learning from failurehttp://blog.ted.com/8-talks-about-learning-from-failure/
http://blog.ted.com/8-talks-about-learning-from-failure/#commentsMon, 04 Mar 2013 16:00:46 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=72227[…]]]>Allan Savory isn’t afraid to own up to the “greatest blunder” of his life. In his incredible talk from TED2013, Savory shares his life’s work managing grasslands in Africa, weaving a gripping tale out of what seems like an unlikely topic.
Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change
In the 1950s, Savory helped create large national parks in Africa. But as people left this land to make way for animal reserves, Savory and his team noticed the land deteriorating and quickly turning into desert. After careful analysis, they determined that the problem was an over-abundance of elephants. And so in a politically heated move, they shot 40,000 elephants in order to save the grasslands.

Only, it didn’t work. Even with all these elephants killed, the grassland deterioration only got worse. In a powerful moment in the talk, Savory expresses his dismay.

“That was the saddest and greatest blunder of my life,” he said. “I will carry that to my grave.”

To hear how Savory, over the next few decades, found real solutions to the problem of desertification — one that involves livestock — watch his talk. Here, other bold speakers who’ve owned up to mistakes or expressed what they’ve learned from failure.

Allan Savory has dedicated his life to studying management of grasslands. And if that doesn’t sound exciting, just wait, because it touches on the deepest roots of climate change and the future of the planet.

“The most massive, tsunami, perfect storm is bearing down on us,” is the grim beginning to Savory’s talk. This storm is the result of rising population, of land that is turning to desert, and, of course, climate change. Savory is also unsure of the belief that new technology will solve all of the problems. He agrees that only tech will create alternatives to fossil fuels, but that’s not the only thing causing climate change.

“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” he says. It’s a process that happens if we leave ground bare, allowing water to evaporate. Even heavy rainfalls will quickly vanish. Terrifyingly, about two-thirds of the world’s land is desertifying. This is huge, because “the fate of water and carbon are tied to soil and organic matter. When we damage soils, we give off carbon.”

Even worse, we might think that only arid and semi-arid land is becoming desert, but tall grasslands are in danger as well. They can have a cancer “that we don’t recognize until it’s terminal form.”

This is mostly caused by livestock. Everyone knows this, says Savory. Scientists have known it for decades. Livestock damage the land, leading to dry ground, leading to desert. This makes sense, and turns out to be quite wrong.

A terrible mistake

In the 1950s, Savory helped to set aside large areas of Africa for national parks. As soon as they removed the people (to protect the animals), the land deteriorated. His theory, backed up by data, was that it was because there were too many elephants. That was “political dynamite,” he said, but a panel agreed with his assessment.

So they shot 40,000 elephants.

But the deterioration only got worse. The elephants were not the problem after all. Says Savory, “That was the saddest and greatest blunder of my life. I will carry that to my grave.” It did give Savory one thing: “I was absolutely determined to find solutions.”

Later, in California he was shocked to find similar problems in national parks, but there was no livestock nearby. So he looked at research stations where cattle had been removed, to prove that that would stop desertification. It didn’t. “Clearly,” he says, “we have never understood what is causing desertification.”

If it wasn’t livestock, as had been assumed for centuries, what was it? “What we had failed to understand was that … the soil and vegetation developed with large numbers of grazing animals.” They also had predators, and so defended themselves by making herds, which are forced to move. This movement prevented over-grazing, while periodic trampling produced good soil. It wasn’t the livestock, but the way the livestock were kept by farmers.

The problems spiral out from this failure to understand. If grass dies on its own, at the end of a season, it must decay biologically before the next growing season. If it doesn’t, it will stifle the next growth. The typical method used to deal with that is to burn the grassland. That does remove the dead grass, allowing a new crop to grow, but it is very damaging, releasing an amount of carbon equivalent to 6,000 cars/second.

Holistic management

So what can they do? “There is only one option left to climatologists and scientists. That is to do the unthinkable: to use livestock, bunched and moving, as a proxy for the herds.” Those herds mulch it down, leaving both the trampled grass and their dung. The grass is then free to grow without having damaged with fire.

Now, how do you actually do that? Herders had 10,000 years of experience moving animals, “but they had created the great man-made deserts of the world.” And then 100 years of modern science that accelerated that process. Clearly more was needed.

He studied other professions — and found new management techniques. With this, he was able to develop what he calls Holistic Management — a way of moving livestock around to mimic the patterns of nature.

The results are stunning. For location after location he shows two comparison photos, one using his technique, one not. The difference is, “a profound change,” and he’s not kidding — in some cases the locations are unrecognizable (in one case the audience gasped). Not only is the land greener, crop yields are increasing. For example, in Patagonia, an expanding desert, they put 25,000 sheep into one flock. They found an extraordinary 50% improvement in production of land in the first year.

“What we are doing globally is causing climate change, as much or more than by fossil fuels,” says Savory. It is also causing poverty, suffering, and war. “If this continues, we are unlikely to be able to stop climate change even after we have eliminated the use of fossil fuels.”

He is currently using this on 15 million hectares on five continents. He estimated that if we do it on half the available land, the growth with take in enough carbon to go back to pre-industrial levles, while feeding people.

“I can think of almost nothing that offers more hope for our planet, for our children, for their children, and for all of humanity.”

]]>http://blog.ted.com/fighting-the-growing-deserts-with-livestock-allan-savory-at-ted2013/feed/29TED2013_0053210_D41_0340BenLPhotos: James Duncan DavidsonTED2013_0052584_D31_3851Sustain!: The speakers in Session 7 at TED2013http://blog.ted.com/sustain-the-speakers-in-session-7-at-ted2013/
http://blog.ted.com/sustain-the-speakers-in-session-7-at-ted2013/#commentsWed, 27 Feb 2013 22:30:31 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=69784[…]]]>It’s no longer possible to ignore the effect humans have — on the environment, on each other and on the Internet. In that spirit, this session brings together people with big ideas on responsible design, creation, consumption and eating. From a renegade gardener to energy software maker, this session takes into mind that it’s not easy being green.

The speakers who appeared in this session. Click on the speaker’s name for a full recap of the talk: